


The Little Shop on the Row

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, My First Carnival Row Fic, Post-Coital Cuddling, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 02:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21312667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: Philo and Vignette find somewhere to bed down in the newly fenced-off Row.
Relationships: Rycroft Philostrate/Vignette Stonemoss
Comments: 10
Kudos: 82





	The Little Shop on the Row

**Author's Note:**

  * For [museumofflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/museumofflight/gifts).

“Well, I’d never any thought to do _THAT_ in the home of a haruspex,” Vignette said, into the warm curve of Philo’s bared neck. She could feel the throb there of him quietly laughing at her wry confession.

It had been but a few short days since the Row had been fenced off, the Critch left within to fend for themselves in a growing-desperate need for space to lodge—not to mention food and other essentials in this deep part of the Burgue that had always struggled to produce either.

“It seemed a clever enough solution,” he said to her. “Who’s there to want inside this place? If not for fear of its witch’s contents, then for fear of Tsigani’s murder. The instinct to avoid it will keep us safe.”

It was as if a cooling breeze played upon her bared wings and back, and she arched them in response. “And give us gooseflesh at the same time,” she brought her arms up, bent at the elbows, and crossed them on his chest. “What, have you a mind to take up her craft now that you’ve no more occupation of your own?”

He gave a flash of a smile in response to the notion. “I’d much rather see this spot bathed in love than in Darkness—” he said, _no matter that I’ve put such darkness to work here, myself,_ he added in his own head. It was not the first time he had lain with Vignette, here—though the other instance had been—not quite real—no matter what his mind and body had been let to believe about it. When he’d first arrived to see if the out-of-the-way shopfront had been claimed by any other fae refugees, he’d quickly stowed the three jars of the grotesque darkasher he’d had Tsigani conjure him out of sight, though he was too knowing a man to think he could put them out of his mind forever. “The strange power in the joining of unlike things,” he said, almost under his breath. That quote shared with him by Mima Sawsaan haunting his mind.

“Well, like as not, you’re not wrong,” said Vignette, taking his last words as merely a nonverbal sigh. “So long as the aura here can been scrubbed away—” she said, casting her eyes about the darkened shop front, “just enough that we can stand to set up house here—but not so much it invites curious visitors, or challengers to our squatting.”

Philo gripped her more tightly to his chest, feeling something of her shiver transfer to him, where with his own warmth and touch he was able to settle it. “You really are spooked by this place.”

She lay her head down on her crossed arms. “Nowhere near as spooked as I am by the new laws and barricade, or by the fact you’re meant to be dead—again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes to the ceiling, hers to the floor just over his shoulder, “about that. About leaving you.”

“Don’t be daft—” she said, dismissing his words, “you were through that gate less than five minutes after they threw me in—” she began to start the protest (that he’d compromised his own freedom by outing himself as half-fae) that had been building in the corner of her mind ever since he had done so. Having him here beneath her, bearing her weight, was like a dream—but she knew such dreams could turn nightmare quickly enough, and she was concerned he’d regret his choice when that day came.

“No, not then,” he gave a slow, labored shake of his head, “I mean THEN. Leaving you, then, in Tirnanoc. In Anoun. Letting you believe—”

“Stop.”

“I can’t. It needs to be said—it needs—"

“It needs to be said—_by you_,” she kept her eyes to the floor, over his shoulder. “I see that. But it doesn’t need to be heard—_by me_. Don’t you see that? I can’t hear it. Perhaps that’s to be your punishment, Philo. You don’t get to apologize to me. And you don’t get to hear me say I forgive you, or that I understand.” Her voice was firm, resolute, but not vindictive.

“Then how can we—” he asked, blindsided, “how can this?”

“I can’t hear about that. I can’t think about that—about the darkness of that,” she turned her eyes back to him, so close now to his own, her breath on his face, at once erotic and (because he didn’t know what was about to be said) forbidding.

“Because here—” she told him, “here is all there is for me. I can’t think about the library, I can’t think about the people I’ve lost. Ones that I loved, ones that were my responsibility but I barely knew. I can’t think about the mountains or my home or my family or my Order. I never plaited a widow’s braid. I am just Vignette here and now, and how I got here and who I was before was washed away in that wreck of the sea, and your skin and the color of your eyes—the way you say ‘moon’--are all that I have to remind me, even, of that.”

“Take them, then,” he said, his voice more quiet than it had been when assaying his apology. “They are, and always have been, yours.” He did not know his eyes had grown wide, alert with her speech, as if needing to take in more light to truly see her.

“And when you stand near me, I can feel you, Philo—even when we aren’t touching. I feel you somewhere in my core. And when we are like this,” she put a hand to her forehead and hairline, “I even feel—I feel your wings like they were never taken. I feel them wrap around me, against my skin,” her eyes closed, “and when you climax I see them halo in light—and it’s the strength of _them _that lifts us up. And maybe that’s a fiction, maybe it’s a foolish daydream, or even an illusion, but I say no,” she was looking at him again. “No, that’s a kind of magic. A powerful enchantment no incantation can break or steal from us two.”

Their mouths came together, his seeking hers, hungry for magic, willing to take part in the making of it. They kissed for awhile, but it was too soon to return to anything else.

He reached for his coat, and the fae charm in its pocket. “Here,” he said, trailing it now through her fingers, “plait it into my hair.” He felt in no position to dispute her naming their coupling as magical. He could not have spoken it so eloquently—then again, his gift for expression was nothing to challenge a librarian’s—and he agreed nothing could take or steal what they two shared.

He may have been robbed of his apology, but unlike Vignette, he could see that his curse was not to forget the past, to put it away, but to worry about the shadow it cast on their present and future. And pray they neither found themselves in a situation to turn their backs on such powerful, rare magic.

She laughed, still with tears half flooding her eyes, unaware of his interior reflections. “Your hair’s not long enough for braids!” she protested.

She was the most beautiful female—the most beautiful anything--he’d ever laid eyes on. He felt awake after years of sleepwalking. “It will be, soon enough,” he promised her, “soon enough.”

In a darker corner of the shop, consigned to its own glass jar separated from its head and tail ends, the midsection of the darkasher trembled.


End file.
